Pink Hill Elementary School’s winning video in the ‘America Is …’ contest sponsored by WoodmenLife opens with the female student in the center of the frame saying, ‘Small town kids with really big dreams … we are the future of America.’

Pink Hill fourth graders’ patriotic video wins first place and $2,500 in national contest

A 30-second video that fourth graders at Pink Hill Elementary School put together to highlight some of the best characteristics of America has won first place and $2,500 in a national contest sponsored by WoodmenLife.

Forty videos were entered in the “America Is …” contest and winners were chosen by popular vote on WoodmenLife’s Facebook page. Pink Hill’s entry collected 963 votes – 293 more than the second-place video. In all, about 10,000 votes were cast during the two-week voting period that ended May 11.

“The kids are thrilled,” said Brenda Griffin, a fourth-grade teacher at the school who found a notice about the contest online and helped pull the project together. “They’ve been so involved in reminding their parents to vote and really getting behind it, trying to reach this goal.”

Wrapped in red, white and blue, the video emphasized the school’s cultural diversity – a mirror on America – and its rural roots.

With Griffin and fellow fourth-grade teachers Jami Finch and Selina Gray supervising, the students developed their dialogue and contributed ideas about staging and costumes.

“We started out by talking about what America meant to us in class,” Griffin said. “Ms. Finch and I went through and chose the ideas that worked best for video.”

The video features two students from each of the four fourth-grade classes. “They chose what patriotic outfits they would wear that day and picked out some of the place they wanted to film,” Griffin said. “We planned what we were going to do one day and videoed it the next day.”

In its campaign for votes, the school sent a letter home to parents and made phone calls, got help from staff members who shared the information on their Facebook pages and alerted all LCPS employees to the contest via email.

“Last week, when it ended, I thought that if we didn’t win it was not because we didn’t give it our best,” the teacher said.

The school plans to use its $2,500 first prize to buy an AED defibrillator and first-aid equipment, part of its campaign to make the rural school safer.

“We hope we never need it,” Griffin said, “but if we do we will be very thankful to have it on hand.”

The winning video is on Facebook at http://tinyurl.com/yacjo7ha.

“We are delighted that students from all over the nation demonstrated their creativity and enthusiasm of what America means to them. The video entries did a great job of expressing patriotism and the many reasons why we celebrate, love and support our country,” Patrick L. Dees, WoodmenLife President and CEO, said in a news release.